Barney Stinson's 'Cheerleader Effect' Is Real — People Look More Attractive In Groups

One of Barney Stinson's ridiculous dating theories from the TV
show How I Met Your Mother is actually right.

The idea from season four episode seven is a theory that he calls
the "cheerleader effect" — a group of women look more attractive
when in a group than they do when seen individually — is now
actually backed up by scientific research.

A study published on Oct. 25 in
Psychological Science found that people were rated as more
attractive when they were part of a group.

Barney explains the idea really well in the episode:

"The cheerleader effect is when a group of women seems hot, but
only as a group," Barney explains. "Just like with cheerleaders.
They seem hot, but take each one individually: Sled dogs."

The real difference is not that striking — the researchers found
that people only look about two percentile points more attractive
when they are part of a group. But the results show that the
cheerleader effect is real. It works for groups of men too, not
just women.

Why do we look more attractive in a group?

When someone is looking at a group of people, that person's brain
tends to "average out" the facial features of everyone in the
group, making all group member's faces look more average than
they would on their own.

Calling someone average-looking might not sound like a
compliment. But Drew Walker, study researcher from the University
of California, San Diego, explained in a
press release that "average faces are more attractive, likely
due to the averaging out of unattractive idiosyncracies."

The study included 130 participants. They were shown pictures of
300 different people and rated the attractiveness of each person
twice — once from a group picture with two other people of the
same gender in it, and once from a cropped picture showing only
one person. The participants rated the person more attractive in
the group shot than when they looked at the person pictured
alone.

You can see the scale used to rate the level of attractiveness in
the image below:

Psychological Science/Walker and
Vul

You can see that the rating from the group picture is slightly
higher than the rating from the individual picture.

The researchers conclude in their results: "Thus, having a few
wingmen — or wing-women — may indeed be a good dating strategy,
particularly if their facial features complement, and average
out, one's unattractive idiosyncrasies."

It turns out that people don't even need to be in an actual group
to look more attractive. People in collages of individual photos
were also rated as more attractive than a photo by itself.
Standing in a crowd of strangers could have a similar effect as
standing and chatting with friends.